A simplified mesh-free method with embedded discontinuities

A simplified mesh-free method with embedded discontinuities is presented. In this method, the crack can be arbitrarily oriented, but its growth is represented discretely by activation of crack surfaces at individual particles, so no representation of the crack surface is needed. The crack is modeled by a local enrichment of the test and trial functions with a sign function, so that the discontinuities are along the direction of the crack. The discontinuity consists of cohesive crack segments that pass through the entire domain of influence at the node. A set of cracking rules is developed to avoid spurious cracking. We show by numerical experiments that complicated crack patterns with branching cracks can be modeled independent of the mesh. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.